


Stand and Deliver!!

by Irascible Jones (The_Fall_of_Water)



Series: Commander Shepards Childhood [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Childhood, Children, Fluff, Fun, Gen, Mass Effect - Freeform, Oneshot, Origins, Parents, Shenanigans, spacer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:05:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21552607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fall_of_Water/pseuds/Irascible%20Jones
Summary: Commander Shepard as a child.In which the Shepard twins play at being pirates, much to their mother's amusement, and their father's chagrin.AU. 21 years before the events in Mass Effect*An earlier version of this work has been published before on Ao3 under a different Pseud*
Relationships: Shepard Family
Series: Commander Shepards Childhood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553182
Kudos: 1





	Stand and Deliver!!

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the dialogue in this piece is in Manc (the local dialect of Manchester, England) where the Shepard twin's father hails from. Vian Shepard slides into Manc in daily life when he experiences frustrating or emotional situations. The twins picked it up quickly, because they are both extremely intelligent and easily bored ;)
> 
> Most phrases and words are easily interpreted in the context of the sentences in which they appear, or are easily found online. However, if you really need a translation, let me know in the comments which bit has you stumped, and I'll be happy to help out.
> 
> Thx for reading!

"HAHA!!!!!!!" One small red headed child hurled herself through the air, foam cutlass in one hand, skewed eyepatch covering her forehead and the residue of a half chewed black crayon colouring her teeth. "Have at ye, ye yampy scunner!!!"

"Watch out!!" yelled the other, almost identical child, leaping to land both feet planted wide in front on their imaginary foe. "That thar's angin' Arfreth! Lookit his jazzy keks!"

"Nah...Nah man no way! Give your 'ead a wobble!!" She shook her cutlass at her brother, it waggled back and forth in the only way a foam cutlass could. " 'e couldn't stop a pig in a ginnel, jazzy keks or no!"

Both children converged and stalked forward, cutlasses drawn, heads low and eyes glaring forward. One of them had a pistol made out of cardboard and macaroni strapped to their thigh with med tape. It wasn’t coming off any time soon.

"That thar's Mingin Morris , an 'es well bad, me cock! Dibble got 'im goodun a time past, an 'e squealed like a well snide stropper." They both hissed disapproval at such a low betrayal to the pirate code. Squealing to the dibble was a capital offence!

Vian Shepard, completely oblivious to being stalked by his offspring, sat sprawled in one of the easy chairs, his head at an awkward angle, and snoring faintly. He'd only meant to close his eyes for a second, data pad report still in one hand. Just a second to rest his eyes. They couldn’t possibly get up to much in a second.

One never left the Shepard twins unsupervised, both of their parents knew that...half the station knew that. The Shepard twins, left to their own devices, unsupervised had been grounds for the station commander to engage emergency protocols on more than one occasion in the past.

The two of them crept closer, using the coffee table as effective cover before scuttling behind the arm of the chair and slowly peering over the top to observe their quarry.

“ ‘e’s geet walla.” Muttered one sibling to the other, and the other agreed with an encouraging grumble and nod of her head.

“Mad walla. Biggun than us…we may has to truss’n up like…” The both nodded thoughtfully and disappeared behind the chair again.

What followed was an intensely whispered conversation between the two eight year olds, crouched on the carpet beside the chair in which their unwitting victim still slumbered. There was quite a bit of gesturing, and pointing out of sightlines on both sides. Then they started peeling bits of macaroni off the fake pistol and using them to construct a layout of the room over which they considered their plan...things were about to get remarkably out of hand.

The whispering finally stopped, and the twins grinned at each other, eyes bright as warning flares.

“A’s bloody beltas!!” he said to his sister.

“Too bloody right, me kid.” She replied.

They clapped hands with each other in agreement before each haring off on missions of their own.

Any parent knows well the constant voice of childhood. Questions, demands, outside voice, inside voice, tantrums, fights, the general auditory violations of the young and enthusiastic. The only thing more frightening to a parent than children having a tantrum in a public thoroughfare is the sudden focused silence of children up to no good.

Vian twitched in his sleep. Somewhere in his brain, his subconscious had recognized this particular timbre of silence, and was trying desperately to wake him up. 

It wasn’t succeeding.

To be fair, it had been a very long day…a long month. With Hannah off station on a recon cruise, care of the twins, when they weren’t in lessons, had fallen solely to their father and one rather harassed housekeeper. Add into this Vian’s command responsibilities to a new marine combat unit fresh from training grounds on Io, and it’s little wonder he’d fallen asleep on the couch. It was actually a miracle it hadn’t happened before now.

There were benefits and drawbacks to having eight year olds who learned at a 16 year old level. Amongst them was their propensity to become easily bored by subjects and exercises that didn’t challenge them. Their intellect belonged to kids almost a decade older than them; their emotions and instincts, however, most certainly still belonged to their eight year old selves.

He had considered killing two birds with one stone earlier in the month by pitting his new squad up against the twins in an infiltrate and secure exercise. He was pretty sure he could convince station brass that this would be a legitimate test of the squad’s abilities, although he’d probably catch a boat-load of heat from Hannah when she got back. 

In the end he’d come to the conclusion that it really wasn’t a fair fight. The squad was just fresh out of training camp, they honestly wouldn’t know what hit them going up against the twins.

He snorted once in his sleep, and shifted slightly, the datapad slipping from his grasp and sliding towards the floor. It was caught by deft little hands before making contact, and possibly causing enough noise to spook their target. Both twins stood frozen beside their father, waiting to see if their stealthy enterprise was about to come undone. One minute passed. Two. Four. Five minutes, Vian resumed softly snoring, and they moved into action once more.

They saved the medi-tape for last, since that was the most likely to rouse Mingin’ Morris from his slumber. Turns out they had no fear on that count. Despite his subconscious hammering away at the inside of his brain, he didn’t stir one iota as they gently pushed the patch over his mouth. That was going to hurt like hell coming off, and he was probably going to have to sacrifice a significant number of facial hairs in the process.

Elated with the success of the first part of their plan, the twins then initiated the second part. 

Operation Trigger Web.

******

_ “Requesting docking vectors, Orinoco Control. Over” _ The call came through unexpectedly, and it took the station operator a second of two to identify the call sign.

“Transmission received, you’re two days early, Roanoke. Any trouble out there? Over.” The operator initiated approach vector calculations and scanned logs for a free bay. They’d had a busy couple of days, hopefully they could find a bay large enough for the Roanoke. 

With the Shenyang still in dock for repairs, and multiple support vessels tagging in and out of the remaining port options, finding an available berth large enough was proving challenging.

_ “Nothing major. Ship in distress, separatist colonists drifting cold in another jerry-rigger. Need a med team at dock though, one of the colonists went in to labour about an hour ago. Over.” _

The operator grimaced in annoyance. “The ship doc can’t handle it? Over.”

_ “Colonist won’t let doc Williams near her. The Captain figured station doctors might have better luck. Over.” _ Came the reply.

The operator shook her head and sighed. Captain Hauyler of the Roanoke was as military a man as you could get out here, close to the terminus systems. _ “Figured station doctors might have better luck” _ was his way of saying he was making it Orinoco Control’s problem, because separatist colonists were generally a pain in the ass, and he didn’t have time for it.

“Roger that, Roanoke. Proceed to docking bay Sierra 3. We’ll have a med team meet you on site. Orinoco Control out.”

_ “Understood Orinoco Control. Roanoke proceeding to docking bay Sierra 3.” _

******

Lieutenant-Commander Hannah Shepard pinged a quick message off to her husband on her omnitool before disembarking the Roanoke. She attempted to avoid, with limited success, the on-deck furore between the pregnant colonist, who didn’t want Alliance doctors anywhere near her, and Orinoco Station med-techs, who were keeping their distance and attempting to convince her that they were not going to harm her, or her baby.

The Captain was just glad to have them off his ship. The number of colonists heading into the Terminus systems on jerry-riggers had increased over the last six months. Invariably, their cheap and badly constructed vessels (hence the name jerry-rigger) went dark for no discernable reason at some point during their voyage, and they usually had to be picked up by Alliance Military ships on patrol. There were plenty of legitimate corporate colony ships that headed out into the Terminus, but some colonists didn’t want to sign on to the contracts, so tried to make do themselves. 

Frequently it ended up costing them a lot more money, time, and occasionally lives.

“Hey, Williams!” Shepard called out to the ship’s doctor, who was also attempting to avoid the stand-off, now punctuated by yelling as the colonists contractions started to really kick in.

Shanti Williams glanced up to see who was calling her, and grinned when she saw it was Shepard. Hannah waited for her to catch up, and they both left the docking bay together, chatting amicably. A couple of days of extra and unexpected downtime was always welcome among the crew, and they both had young families to come home to.

“So how’s Nora settling in now after the move?” Shepard asked. Shanti had been posted to the Roanoke out of Orinoco Station for just over three months. Her wife, Nora, had made the re-location with their son, Issa, a couple of weeks before the Roanoke headed out on their month long patrol.

“She was hip deep in packing boxes and rearranging our quarters the last time I saw her. And as much as she likes to grumble about that kind of thing, you bet your ass she was loving it!” They laughed. “I did tell her to drop in on Vian if she needed anything, like you offered. But I think she likes the challenge of new places and people.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about Vian. He will have had his hands full the last month with new cadets, and the twins.” Hannah loved her kids dearly, madly, with everything she had. But by god, didn’t she hope the next ten years passed swiftly so they could both be bundled off to the academy, or university, or wherever they could attain some higher education or purpose and not perennially threaten to cause core implosion of the station simply by existing on it.

“Oh now, surely they can’t be that bad?” Shanti chided. She had heard the stories, but really, some of them were quite unbelievable.

“Shanti, my kids may look like regular eight year olds, but trust me, they punch way above their pay grade! If they put their minds to it, they could probably build an eezo core in one afternoon of down time, and then forget about it until it started leaking eezo into the carpet.” She laughed at Shanti’s shocked face. “Oh, don’t worry. They’d never deliberately hurt anyone. They’re just highly imaginative and easily bored.”

As if to emphasise that point, Hannah opened her front door to find the hallway, dark except for red flashing emergency lighting, criss-crossed by webs of cord somehow melded to the walls. There was a moment of stunned silence as they both stared in abject disbelief.

Hannah reached forward with one hand, pushing at the closest cord, and an alarm sounded within the apartment.

“ARGH-HARGH!!!” greeted her in stereo as the twins leapt from their vantage points on the kitchen bench and behind the half turned over coffee table barricade to confront the invaders.

“Lookit thar!!! Besiegers!!!!” yelled one, waving a now slightly bent and devoid of macaroni makeshift cardboard pistol around in the air.

“Ye canna have th’ hostage, or we’ll give ya down the banks, like!!” bellowed the other, hair waving around like a mad woman.

“Oh good lord.” Hannah sighed. She brought up her omnitool and tried to patch into the apartment systems. Access denied. Seriously. Having prodigy eight year olds was sometimes a massive pain in the proverbial.

“Where’s your father!” She called out to the twins.

They deflated slightly, and her daughter pouted.

“Muuuum!! We’re being pirates! C’mon!” She whacked at one of the cords with the foam cutlass.

“ ‘at’s right!! An’ he ain’t me da’ !!!!” Yelled the other, not willing quite yet to let the game go. This did nothing but encourage his sister, who dropped immediately back into character.

“AR!!! ‘e’s Mingin’ Morris, and ye canna have him!!” She bared her crayon coated teeth at the front doorway.

Shanti, now that she was seeing the terrible twins for herself, was actually quite amused. She was having trouble keeping a straight face.

“Oh for the love of…” Hannah sighed heavily. “ Alrigh’ then.” Her affected accent was terrible, but the twins appreciated her efforts. “Parley then.”

“Bollockin’ Bertha’s invoked a rite o' parlay!!!” they hooted and yelled.

“Oi! Language please you two.” Hannah had an imperious ‘mother’ voice, and the twins shrugged and shuffled a bit in apology.

“aye, sorry, our mam.” Her daughter acquiesced, and her brother did the same.

“Alrigh’ Parley terms. Ye givun me yon gadgie…Mingin Morris, what’s ye mither?” They say you should never bargain with children….’They’ had never met the Shepard twins.

Satisfied that their mother was playing along, the twins withdrew a few steps to discuss the terms of the parley. They seemed to come to an agreement, and stepped back to face her across the web strewn hallway.

“Us wants later timin' for scratcha. A years worth!” The demand was.

Hannah pretended to ponder it seriously, before returning with a counter offer.

“A week.”

There was much ARGHing and not-quite-cussing at this counter offer, and the twins returned to their whispered discussion.

“Six month!” they counter-counter offered.

She didn’t bother pondering that over long.

“A week!” She again replied.

One twin whacked the other over the shoulder, and the whispered discussion became tense and interspersed with gesticulation and louder mutters.

They both returned with dark looks.

“A month, an that gem be our final offer!” they returned.

Hannah deftly changed tack.

“A…day.” She countered. And it was worth it to see the shock and dismay on the twin’s faces.

“A’righ, a’right!! A week!!” they frantically called, grasping onto the better option.

“Done, yen! A week. Now giz ye donnies and clear this ‘ere mess up so I’s can put wood int’ ‘ole!!”

There was much celebratory arghing and shaking of cutlasses as the twins danced around in a mad reel of joy. Hannah cleared her throat and they finally began to disassemble their mad web of cords and returning the apartment VI to it’s normal parameters.

Shanti was caught between amusement and confusion. "So, what just happened here?"

"They bargained a weeks worth of later bed-time for, the return of _ Mingin’ Morris _ aka, their father...and cleaning up this mess" Hannah translated.

"Really, you bargain with them?" Shanti was surprised.

"Oh _ yes we do _, trust me, it's one of the few things that actually works." The adults were finally able to make it through the front door and into the hall.

"So, where's Vian?" Shanti pondered.

“I’m fairly sure we have seen half of it yet.” Hannah chuckled. There has still been no sign of her husband, and she strongly suspected that whatever the twins had done to him would rank high on the _ “Insane shit my kids have done to me” _ list. 

Yes, there was a list, it was quite long, and yes, Vian featured prominently.

He still lay sprawled in the easy chair, and had not woken until the proximity alarms had gone off, startling to find himself solidly trussed up with half a roll of medi-tape plastered over his mouth. Hs first reaction had been panic and anger…then he had heard the twins and Hannah in the hall, at which point he slid rapidly into resignation and annoyance.

Hannah motioned on the living room lights, the twins trudging around with reams of cord, muttering to themselves in Manc and argh-ing every now and then. The expression on Vian’s face quickly passed into relief and, even though he was unintelligible, the words “Oh thank bloody god!” were an obvious given.

“Wow.” Hannah regarded him which a wry little smile, Shanti guffawed.

His wife brought up her omni-tool and positioned it to take a clear shot of the scene.

“Oh come on, Han!!” Vian grumbled through the tape.

“Oh no, _ this _ photo. This photo is for the next time you insist that they are _ my _ children.” She snapped the shot and laughter rippled again through the apartment…faintly chased by the sounds of one twin putting the other to the sword, just in time for supper.


End file.
